McAfee Internet Security Suite 2007 review

Competent protective software for your PC

Jump to Section:

Our Verdict

Offers a great deal for the asking price

For

Site Advisor tool

Works well on fresh machine

Against

Takes a while to install and set up

The McAfee Internet Security Suite 2007 box proudly claims it's an 8-in-1-protection tool. With all suites offering similar services, it's increasingly hard to find ones that offer something different. However, there are a couple of key tools here that help to differentiate the package.

Before you even get to secure your data online, you can use this suite to back up your files or restore to a previous version. QuickClean can be used to remove old System Restore points, as well as unused shortcuts.

If you're installing McAfee on to a fresh machine, you won't have any problems, but on our test machine it identified previous security tools and asked for them to be uninstalled. The program can't do this automatically, so you'll find yourself manually uninstalling anything identified as incompatible.

The main interface is grouped together, in this instance referred to as the Security Centre, with a large green tick highlighting your system is in good health.

For a more detailed breakdown of what is happening to your system, you can check out individual security areas, with Computer & Files, Internet & Network, Email & IM and Parental Controls being the main sections. In each one you'll find the tools that help protect that specific area. You'll find shared tools, such as anti-virus software, crop up a few times, but are in fact the same application.

With most security suites offering the same array of features, it's refreshing to find the McAfee Site Advisor, which is a little tool that sits in the toolbar and displays a colour to warn about the security quality of any website page you're on.

It does this by running a number of tests in the background, checking for spam and pop-ups, as well as checking the security rating of the site itself. It works with Internet Explorer, as well as Mozilla Firefox, and is a great tool to have installed if you regularly search for new sites.

Updates are checked on a regular basis, but along with your year's subscription you'll find McAfee will routinely send critical updates, if and when a new virus is detected. This approach is fairly standard and takes most of the worry out of maintaining a strong line of defence.

McAfee offers a great deal for the asking price and, while it can take a while to install and set up the way you want it, if you haven't got any form of protection on your system, this may well be the one for you.